Next stop, Kew Gardens! As soon as I heard we were going to a botanical library, I knew I would love it! Even though I have a black thumb, I still love the idea of being a librarian in a special library that is all about plants.
Back before America was even a country, Kew Gardens was a royal refuge and a place for King George II to wander about admiring greenery. It wasn't until 1837 that Queen Victoria decided to open the gardens to everyone, and I'm so glad she did! This garden is stunning!
My vocab word of the day was herbarium-- a library for dried plants, seeds and bulbs. I wish we could've seen what that was like, but I still enjoyed my tour very much.
One thing I found very shocking is that there is no official catalog for the materials at this library! It was started so long ago with no formal system, and now there's just not enough time or staff to go through all of the materials they have and get a proper classification system together. She mentioned that there's a lot of finding hidden gems that were just stashed for identification and organizing them as she finds them. That just blows my mind.
The last thing I'll say about the Kew Gardens at the moment is that I didn't know how badly Beatrix Potter wanted to be accepted into the scholarly work being done there. If given the opportunity she could've been quite the mycologist! She worked out why fairy rings pop up the way they do, but no one there listened or cared, because they were a bunch of dumb men who wouldn't let her do anything.
She didn't go on to create the Peter Rabbit works until much later, but writing wasn't really her main passion. That's too bad.
And I couldn't help but notice that the Kew Gardens gift shop had a rather large section devoted to Beatrix Potter products even though they never respected her or appreciated her when she was alive.
Anyway, chauvinism aside, the garden was beautiful, and I loved it very much. I simply must return there some day!
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